Murder suspect had been wanted on warrant

December 29, 2009

Despite an arrest warrant issued some six weeks earlier, parolee Lee Cration was still on the streets Christmas Eve, when he allegedly shot and killed an elderly Hyde Park man loading food for a holiday party into his car.

Cration, 48, was accused of failing to comply with terms of his parole and was listed as "AWOL," meaning that parole agents could not find him, said Januari Smith, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman.

Yet some who had contact with Cration in the days before the Dec. 24 slaying questioned Tuesday why authorities had not been able to pick him up, rejecting the notion that he would have been hard to find. Instead, they said, he was regularly attending church, staying in city shelters and visiting with friends up until last week.

"It's hard to believe that they couldn't find him, it's hard to believe," said Albert Thompson, a deacon at Cration's church who added that he had seen the ex-con about two weeks before Ralph Elliott, 79, was slain.

"The system failed and I think we all failed," Thompson said. "He fell through the cracks."

Thompson and Michael Horton, a pastor at Hyde Park Seventh-day Adventist Church, said they had never been contacted by authorities about Cration's alleged parole violation.

Cration, who served about 24 years in prison for a 1984 murder and two attacks on peace officers while in custody, was paroled in November 2008. For the first 90 days after his release, he was electronically monitored.

Horton said the ex-con began attending religious services at his church about a month after his release from prison. Cration also ate at the church's soup kitchen and got employment counseling there, Thompson said. In addition, the church received some mail for Cration, who listed the building as an address when searching for jobs, church leaders said.

In recent weeks, his attendance was less regular, Horton said. But both Horton and Thompson saw him there this month.

It is unclear whether the Department of Corrections knew that Cration spent time at the church. Officials declined to specifically address how parole officers handled Cration's case. But the emerging information about Cration's warrant and whereabouts highlights the challenges facing a system with far more parolees than parole officers.